UCSD becoming lab for energy innovation

John R. McCutchen

Photovoltaic panels double as sun shades for cars atop the Hopkins Parking Structure at UCSD. The panels are one small part of the university's attempt to become a national model for implementing new power technologies.

Photovoltaic panels double as sun shades for cars atop the Hopkins Parking Structure at UCSD. The panels are one small part of the university's attempt to become a national model for implementing new power technologies. (John R. McCutchen)

Within moments, he's advising that the photovoltaic panels atop the garage are pumping out 243 kilowatts of electricity, down from their peak of 271 kilowatts.

A graph on his screen shows the ups and downs of the electric production.

“You can see the morning fog,” he says, looking at his computer, not the sky.

While the solar panels on the roof are good, they're not enough, says Washom, the university's director of strategic energy initiatives.

He's part of UCSD's effort to become a national model for finding, testing and implementing new power technologies by having the people who run its facilities working together with the scientists on the cutting edge.

“It's not enough anymore to install solar panels, change lightbulbs or recycle,” said Jan Kleissl, an assistant professor of engineering.

The university “is moving from today's version of sustainability and changing to tomorrow's version,” said Steve Relyea, vice chancellor of business affairs.

UCSD is able to conduct tests because the university is in charge of how it makes and uses its power.

For instance, Kleissl has installed a sky imager — an eye on the sky designed to track clouds and predict their movement — hoping that UCSD's electric system can efficiently adjust for the loss of power when the sun stops hitting solar panels.

And a section of the school is being designated the “East Campus Sustainability Park,” integrating solar panels, fuel cells, battery storage, algae fuel production and efficient cooling of buildings.

“It also, in the end, connects us to academia,” said Frieder Seible, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD.

University researchers are working on new materials and nanotechnology to better capture the power of sunlight, he said. Some are even working on a way to capture and transport light.

Other technology now at the La Jolla campus, or soon to appear there, includes:

•An array of micro-weather stations used to tweak the heating and cooling of buildings across campus.

•A solar panel that tracks the sun and concentrates light using magnifying glasses for high efficiency.

•A smart grid to monitor hundreds of thousands of devices across the university and adjust energy production and usage to maximize efficiency.

•Self-contained data centers with “virtual computers” that run experiments with less electricity and are located outside buildings so they don't overheat workspaces.

•An eight-story tank that stores 6.8 million gallons of water cooled at night, when electricity is cheap, and uses it to cool buildings during the day, when electricity is expensive.

•Energy-efficient buildings with white roofs to reflect heat and people-sensors so rooms are cooled or heated only when occupied and use as much natural ventilation as possible.

The university has a 30-megawatt natural-gas-fired power plant on campus in addition to 1 megawatt of solar. It produces three-quarters of the power used during peak times on campus.

The efforts are drawing attention elsewhere.

“They're leaders in terms of using the green side of energy technology,” said Harold Gottschall, a San Diego energy industry veteran who now works on utility-scale batteries. “They seem to be literally turning the campus into a laboratory.”

Such moves in academia are difficult to measure, said Matthew St. Clair, the Berkeley-based sustainability manager for the University of California. But UCSD is a leader, particularly in its efforts of using renewable sources of energy.

“For a major research university, UC San Diego is perhaps doing more than anyone,” he said. “I do suspect they will become a model.”

Just on Thursday, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. announced that UCSD will be part of its efforts to create a regional smart grid. The school will serve “as a living laboratory” for technology to manage the way electricity is produced and used.

The sustainability park is a key piece of the puzzle, and may someday feature a visitor center.

“From here, they will be able to see the technology horizon,” Washom said, standing at the edge of a parking lot on a hill overlooking medical buildings on the campus.

Next to a centralized cooling plant, the university is planning to install a 2.8-megawatt fuel cell to be powered by methane from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The process will take gas produced by bacteria breaking down waste — gas that is now burned off — and use chemistry akin to a battery's to convert it into electricity, heat, carbon dioxide and water.

Each of those outputs will be used in novel ways.

Some of the electricity will run a data center — a collection of computers available remotely to researchers and others.

Because the fuel cell produces direct current electricity and computers run on direct current, putting the data center next to the fuel cell will save the trouble, expense and waste of converting it to alternating current, the kind of electricity distributed by utilities.

Most of the electricity will also be fed into the university's grid to power classrooms, laboratories and medical devices.

When demand drops at night, surplus electricity will be used to charge a giant battery, capable of storing enough electricity to put out 2.8 megawatts for four hours.

“Keeping those electrons on campus” is important, because the power is more valuable to the university than in the open market, Washom said.

The battery will then be used to supplement other sources of power during the day, when demand is highest.

The heat energy from the fuel cell will power a chiller to cool buildings.

And the plan is to use the carbon dioxide and water in massive troughs covered in translucent material where algae will grow in experiments to make biofuels.

Washom is uniquely suited to help coordinate these efforts.

A quarter-century ago, he set the record for efficiency from a solar installation — meaning it turned a greater share of the power in sunlight into electricity than anyone had before. The record was unbroken until last year.

Before joining the university, Washom spent years investigating alternative energy sources for the World Bank and other organizations to make sure they could deliver what they promised.

But his interest in sustainability began long ago, when he lived on a remote island in the South Pacific where the Navy had stationed his father.

A diesel generator provided power for a few hours a night and each person had one gallon of fresh water a day.

“It was the smallest carbon footprint I ever had, but I was without want,” Washom said.